Isobel leans on the counter, eyes narrowed in my direction while she sips champagne from a flute. She’s wearing a flowing pale dress not suitable for the frigid temperature and her makeup looks professional, her sleek black hair straightened, so sharply there’s barely any movement in the strands.
Gone was any sort of vulnerability she showed the other night when she downed vodka and cried on my living room floor, but that was Isobel.
There was nothing left of my sister at all. The six years she was missing ensured that and the three years since, training her, strengthening her only solidified that fact. Sure, she had times when she slipped back into her past, where her nightmares became so real, she had no other option but to let it out, but it was only ever in front of me. No one else. No one else saw what she deemed a weakness.
“Ace tells me you met a woman.” She clicks her tongue and downs the champagne, “Eleanor Locke.”
Even her name stirs a desire so hot inside me, it threatens to burn me alive where I stand.
When I say nothing and head through the manor she follows, her high, pointed stilettos clipping against the tiles on the floor, “Another hole or someone you’re actually interested in?”
“Mind your business,” I snap.
Isobel whistles, “And here it all goes wrong.”
“I didn’t realize you were in the business of fortune-telling, sister, but go right ahead, predict what’s going to happen.”
“Don’t fuck this up, Kingston, I have been patient, I have waited and sat on the side lines while you planned this to let you have the control, but if you fuck this up for some fucking little whore employed by the very people who screwed me so thoroughly, I will kill you myself.”
“You have very little faith in me,” I reply coolly.
She scoffs, “I had faith, but then you fucked it up that first time with the hacking and now, I have very little.”
I stop dead in my tracks, spinning so quickly she has no choice but to stop too. My fist slams against the wall.
She was right. I did fuck it up that first time. I waited too long. I knew someone else was in the system, but my curiosity got the better of me and I watched them as they took the information about the Syndicate that rightfully belonged to me, and then I was locked out before I even got a whiff of that precious data I needed to fulfil my promise to Isobel.
“I got it back, didn’t I?” My voice is quiet, steady, showing not even an ounce of anger despite my show of rage.
She quirks a brow, “and how long did that delay us, Kingston?”
Granted, having to fly all the way to America was a setback. Having to recalculate and strategize again was a setback but it worked in the end. After I watched that information be stolen from me, I learned all there was to know about the family that had taken it from me. The Silver’s, namely Alexander Silver and his people. It had been Ainsley, a hacker under his payroll that had got into the Syndicates servers before I managed it, it had been her that had triggered the alarm and had all the systems shutting down. I had to get it back.
I’d spent months planning and plotting our way into those servers that I wasn’t going to let it slip away that easily, except, when I finally reached the US I found out that Ainsley was on the run, Alexander Silver’s woman, Wren Valentine had been kidnapped by her father, Marcus, who was under the Syndicate’s thumb. He didn’t have the information and his city of Brookeshill was going to shit because he was killing everything and anything that stood between him and his woman.
A weakness is what my uncle would call that, but in some cases, I supposed, it’s a strength.
I had to change my plan. I was originally going to kill them all, kill every last one of the Silver line and his men, including this precious little Wren and her father but after I heard the whole story, saw it for my own eyes, I realized him and I were not so different.
So, I used him.
I used his woman to get what I needed and made a bargain with her father. My resources, which were plentiful, in exchange for his daughter. She was stunning, and feisty, and alluring so saving her from him was worth it, and then I double crossed him.
Men like Alexander Silver live by a code. They will pay back a debt and, in this case, the debt was Wren. So that’s what I did, I exploited his weakness to get the information I needed. After I held that flash drive in my hand, I didn’t care what happened to them, even if Wren reached out to offer her support. This was my war, my fight, and it was one I would do alone.
I didn’t mind helping out Wren and taking down Valentine, after all he was a despicable human being, using women as sex slaves and trading them like cattle and with what happened to Isobel, I would never tolerate that kind of shit.
“I will end this,” I tell her, emotion now coating my tongue. Rage mainly. “I will kill them all and once I’m done if you want to bathe in their blood go right ahead, but if you continue to threaten me and continue to imply that you’ll somehow sabotage this entire thing, you won’t be happy with the consequences.”
My sister shrinks back, her eyes, so similar to mine, widening with her fear. “You’re just like him.”
The words are whispered, barely a breath but I hear them.
I don’t let her see what they do to me. I slam my way through the house and meet Ace in the kitchen. I pin him with a glare, “Say one more thing about what I do in my spare time to anyone, and I’ll be the one who cuts out your tongue.”
All he does in return is give me a cocky smile and a quirked brow.
Arsehole.
“Bring up the cameras,” I wave a finger, ordering the laptops to be brought out in front of me, showing every single camera in Tobias’ building.
The information I managed to get from Alexander Silver was bountiful. Tobias was one of three heads in charge of the Syndicate. Well protected and unsuspecting and he would lead me to the other two who had yet to be mentioned in any of the reports.
The meeting the other day was more than just seeing his face, it was to use the time inside the building to implant my hackers and now I have unlimited viewing of everything that goes on inside that office building of his.
I have people installing trackers on his cars and that of his sons, I have people in his house. I was taking him down from the inside out, and only once he realizes he’s lost it all will I strike the killing blow.
I watch the morning's feed, seeing all his employees filtering into the building, going about their day, unsuspecting of the man they work for, and then I see Eleanor. Her back is stiff as she walks down the hall, dressed in a well pressed pantsuit, her feet in a pair of stiletto heels. Despite the clothes I see her curves underneath, the way the suit jacket tucks in at the waist, showing off her hourglass figure and her trousers stick to the intimate curve of her hips, hugging her arse, the soft flesh begging for my hands.
“Stop it,” I order as I watch her march up to Garrett, Tobias’ son. Unfortunately, the cameras have no audio so I can’t make out what she is saying but, whatever it is, she feels strong enough about it that her anger shines in her eyes. The emotion is not alone though, concern, fear, they are evident in her expression. Garrett dismisses her as quickly as the conversation started and that’s when she went outside to make her phone call, the moment I caught her crying on the pavement outside.
What happened, and what did she know about them?
Perhaps Eleanor wasn’t as innocent as she looked? Maybe she had more to do with this than I had given her credit for. Anyone can wear a mask and maybe her fear for me was a deep-rooted instinct that told her that I could be the one to end whatever plan she had in place.
It was a long shot but, at this point, I wasn’t going to rule out any options.
“I want a tail put on the girl,” I tell Ace.
He grins knowingly.